A new study from the CDC shows that teen sex may be creeping up, while condom use is decreasing, The Washington Post reports.
The new report did not examine the reason for the trends, but experts said there could be many causes, including rising complacency about AIDS, changing attitudes about sex and pregnancy, shifts in ethnic diversity and the possibility that there will always be some teens who cannot be convinced to wait."The truth is that as a field we really don't know what the answer is," [Sarah S. Brown of the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy] said. "There are lots of theories: the economy, classroom education, the messages kids are getting in the digital world where they spend their time. They probably all play a role."
But the new figures renewed the heated debate about sex education classes that focus on abstinence until marriage, which began receiving federal funding during the period covered by the latest survey and have come under increasing criticism that they are ineffective.
In other words, teaching kids that condoms cause cancer and don't work may be mucking things up. (Not to mention raising a generation that thinks bleach and Mountain Dew are acceptable contraceptives.)
"Since we've started pushing abstinence, we have seen no change in the numbers on sexual activity," said John Santelli, chairman of the Department of Population and Family Health at Columbia University. "The other piece of it is abstinence education spends a good amount of time bashing condoms. So it's not surprising, if that's the message young people are getting, that we're seeing condom use start to decrease."
Abstinence proponents' response? It's Carrie's fault!
"It's highly ironic this comes out right after the launch of the biggest movie of the season, which is 'Sex in the City.' The No. 1 movie that all teenage girls want to see right now is 'Sex in the City,' " said Charmaine Yoest of the Family Research Council. "Our culture continues to tell them the way to be cool is to dress provocatively and to consider non-marital sexual activity to be normative."
Never mind that the gals of Sex in the City are middle aged and, you know, fictional. Oh, and non-marital sexual activity is normative. Time for a new sound bite, perhaps?
For more information on comprehensive sex education (you know, the kind that works), check out Advocates for Youth and SIECUS.
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Personally, I've found that with many women my age (early 20's) condoms carry a very negative connotation. Basically, the unspoken bit of it is that if you carry condoms you're a whore.
One part of this that condoms are viewed to be solely STD preventative. And because some people believe STDs only happen the promiscuous... you get the picture.
And thus, the anxiety over purity has a very direct, negative affect on sexual health.
"Oh, and non-martial sexual activity is normative."
totally. i think we should all join in condemning martial sex. whether it's kung-fu or tae kwon do or even just marquis of queensbury, it has no place in bed.
Uh, where did all the other comments from before, in this post, go?
A whole lot seems to have gone missing.
Maybe somethings wrong with my browser.
"The No. 1 movie that all teenage girls want to see right now is 'Sex in the City,'" said Charmaine Yoest of the Family Research Council."
Nitpicky, I know, but I can't suppress the copyeditor instinct: Geez, FRC, if you're going to bash the show/movie, at least get the name right! And shouldn't WaPo have put a [sic] in there or something?
I'm guessing that 'martial' was a typo for 'marital', but I'm concerned by the claim that pre-marital sex is 'normative'. It's certainly normal, but is there really a general belief that not having pre-marital sex is wrong?
I'm guessing that 'martial' was a typo for 'marital', but I'm concerned by the claim that pre-marital sex is 'normative'. It's certainly normal, but is there really a general belief that not having pre-marital sex is wrong?
"The No. 1 movie that all teenage girls want to see right now is 'Sex in the City,' " said Charmaine Yoest of the Family Research Council. "Our culture continues to tell them the way to be cool is to dress provocatively and to consider non-marital sexual activity to be normative."
My (male) roomate just walked in the room and said "I just figured out what was bugging me about that article you showed me..."
He pointed out that Charmaine Yoest is backhandedly blaming girls for the rise in unprotected sexual activity. After all, teenage boys aren't watching Sex and the City, and girls are responsible for being the gatekeepers of sexual activity, and if a girl doesn't insist on it no teenage boy is going to suggest using a condom, right? That's just insulting to everyone involved.
I've got a sound bite. How about "people were fucking long before Carrie Bradshaw"?
No disagreement with the point of Jessica's post, but I think perhaps she don't realize that normative is not a synonym of normal. What is normative is what is intended to make something normal, it is prescriptive. This being the case, majority behavior does not define what is "normative".
Putting aside "non-marital sex" for the moment, consider something like lying or speeding. Arguably, the vast majority of Americans do both, at least occasionally and many quite often. Yet I doubt that you could make a convincing argument that lying is normative, and an argument that speeding is normative would be difficult (but not impossible).
Closer to home, consider adultery. I don't really know what the stats are on it—maybe the majority of married Americans have had sex outside their marriage, maybe not. But, supposing that a majority have committed adultery, you still couldn't plausible claim that adultery is normative in American culture. There is still a fairly strong taboo against it.
So, clearly, what we mostly agree we ought to do doesn't have to be what we actually do (sadly).
The problem with this particular example is that this distinction between should/does is complicated when there are competing narratives on the "should" side.
One can take a neutral, relativistic approach and decide that the majority narrative in a culture about morality is what is objectively described as "normative". In this view, I'd personally judge that American culture does not have a normative narrative about non-marital sex. We neither require nor condemn it.
Alternatively, you have a non-relativistic view which asserts a normative behavior on the basis of some authority (natural or metaphysical, doesn't matter). Charmaine Yoest clearly believes that some authority has defined what is normative regarding non-marital sex, and specifically that it is taboo.
I should point out, or acknowledge, that linguistically normal really does have a prescriptive aspect to it. This can clearly be seen by the word abnormal and its connotations. That places normative and normal more closely together than I've implied. This is why normal is not a synonym of common, though it's sometimes used that way. Jessica's statistics reference only show that non-marital sex is common, not that it is normal, and not that it is normative.
Personally, I'm an absolutist in this case—though a very different absolutist than Charmaine Yoest. I believe that sex is good for people and everyone should have it, married and unmarried! So, yeah, I consider unmarried sex to be normative. But that's because I have a competing, non-relativistic narrative on morality to Yoest's. I'm her enemy. But American culture in general? Not really. It's more ambivalent or neutral.